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In the “everybody knows”
category of classical-music listening, there are a few near certainties.
Everybody knows Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
Everybody knows Schuman’s Manfred
Overture. Everybody knows Bach’s St.
Matthew Passion. And everybody knows Gustav Holst’s The Planets. But not everybody knows everything about these staples
of the classical repertoire, as is clear from some fascinating new recordings
that provide context and, not coincidentally, some wonderfully expansive views
that go well beyond what “everybody knows.”

The Four Seasons, for example, are the first four of the 12
concertos of Vivaldi’s Op. 8 collection, which bears the charming title, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione
(“The contest between harmony and invention”). This is a good-natured contest
to the extent that it is one at all – it is more of an exploration of the
inventive possibilities of Baroque concertos for violin (and in two cases for
violin or oboe). The first four concertos, the famous seasonal ones, are among
the best-known pieces in all of classical music, and it may seem there is very
little new that can be done with them – but the wonderful Brilliant Classics
recording featuring Federico Guglielmo proves that not to be the case.
Guglielmo is an absolutely marvelous interpreter of Vivaldi, and the Baroque
instrument he uses – a rather difficult one to control properly – fits the
music so well that Vivaldi’s unusual structures, harmonies and tone-painting
come through with amazing freshness, brightness and clarity. Guglielmo’s very
small string-ensemble backup, L’Arte dell’Arco, provides wonderful balance for
his solos and contributes equal verve and enthusiasm. The Four Seasons have never sounded better. But there is a great
deal more to Vivaldi’s Op. 8, and Guglielmo’s handling of the rest of the
concertos is revelatory. The greatest virtuosity in the set lies not in the
first four concertos but in Nos. 7 in D minor, 8 in G minor, and 11 in D, and
hearing Guglielmo in these three works is simply thrilling. The decision to use
the oboe versions of Nos. 9 in D minor and 12 in C is a happy one, giving Pier
Luigi Fabretti his own chance to shine and providing fresh perspective on
Vivaldi’s writing throughout this set of a dozen works. And there are small
delights everywhere here: the depth of feeling in the central movement of No.
10 in B-flat, “La caccia”; the attempt to portray the emotion of pleasure in
No. 6 in C, “Il piacere”; the wonderful display of nature’s anger in No. 5 in E-flat,
“La tempesta di mare”; and much more. This excellent two-CD set – offered at a
remarkable price – is a joy in itself, and doubly so for putting The Four Seasons into the context in
which Vivaldi himself placed them.

Schumann’s Manfred is more than an overture and
less than a symphony: it was Tchaikovsky who created a symphony based on Lord
Byron’s poem, which was written in a now-obsolete form as a play intended to be
read but not acted. The story of Manfred is that of a powerful but tormented
magician who can control supernatural forces but not his own human desires and
yearnings; who has committed a never-specified crime and suffers from unending
guilt; and who takes to the mountains to confront the spirits that live there
and eventually to find surcease in death – which he welcomes on his own terms.
It is a quintessentially Romantic tale, and it is scarcely surprising that it
inspired such striking Romantic music. But although Schumann called his setting
a “dramatic poem with music in three parts,” and intended the words (abridged
and in German translation) to be interspersed with the music (often in the form
of melodrama), it is only the highly dramatic overture that most listeners have
ever heard. The new Ars Produktion SACD, offering a full hour-plus of the music
and much of the verbiage (although the text is abridged from Schumann’s
abridgment), is quite wonderful, not only because some of the music is of very
high quality but also because this release, like Guglielmo’s of Vivaldi’s Op.
8, provides context that is almost entirely missing in the realm of what
“everybody knows.” The overture remains the most impressive element here, being
self-contained and doing a good job – like Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 – of encapsulating the whole drama. But just
as Beethoven’s overture is no substitute for the entirety of Fidelio, so Schumann’s Manfred Overture does not, in and of
itself, provide the same impact as the whole set of incidental music. In
addition to dialogue and melodramas, Schumann offers tone-paintings of Alpine
scenes, music associated with the various spirits called up and rejected by
Manfred, choral pieces, a final hymn after Manfred declares that “it is not so
difficult to die,” and more. Byron’s poem is certainly overwrought and
difficult to relate to from a contemporary perspective, but what remains is the
effectiveness of the portrayal of the internal limitations faced even by a man far
stronger and more learned than other men, a sort of Nietzschean Superman
(Nietzsche admired Manfred and
himself wrote some music inspired by it). It is easy to deem Manfred simply a Faustian tale, and
indeed Byron’s poem and Goethe’s have some elements in common. But Faust is
eventually saved in a stunning peroration that Mahler set brilliantly in the
second part of his Symphony No. 8. Manfred does not find salvation, for the
simple reason that he does not seek it. But neither will he accept damnation:
he will die to escape his inner torment, but only when he is ready and only as
he chooses. Schumann’s Manfred music,
taken as a whole, elucidates Byron’s poem to a far greater extent than does the
familiar overture on its own. The chance to hear the overture in context in
this very fine, very well-paced performance directed by Fabrizio Ventura, and
to explore Manfred as Schumann saw
the poem and the character, is not to be missed.

Matters are a bit different
when it comes to the St. Matthew Passion
and its earlier cousin, the St. John
Passion. A lot has been written about the St. John Passion, which exists in multiple versions and which Bach
repeatedly changed in ways that he never did with the St. Matthew Passion. But the earlier work is not performed nearly
as often as the later one, and when it is, there remain uncertainties about which
version of it to use and how many singers and instrumentalists to include.
These are some reasons that “everybody knows” the St. Matthew Passion, while the St.
John Passion is far less familiar. On the basis of the excellent BR Klassik
release led by Peter Dijkstra with meticulous attention to period performance
practice and a sure sense of pacing and balance, the St. John Passion certainly has come into its own. In this
particular case, it has come into its own specifically for German speakers: the
text is given in German only, and the third disc in this three-CD set is an
extended (hour-and-a-quarter) discussion and analysis of the work, with musical
illustrations, entirely in German. For those not fluent in German, that makes
this release in some ways a real disappointment. What saves it, though, is the
exceptional quality of the performance itself – which is, after all, the reason
most people will buy a recording or decide not to do so. Julian Prégardien handles the very demanding
role of the Evangelist with musical skill and emotional impact, Tareq Nazmi
gives warmth and personality to the role of Jesus, and the small-scale vocal
and instrumental ensembles produce sound that is at once light and serious,
clear and (when necessary) impressively massed. Dijkstra chooses tempos well,
and the narrative of the St. John Passion
moves smartly along from event to event with suitable inevitability. The
“commenting arias” in the first part expand upon the action without slowing it
down, and the second, longer part of the work builds effectively from piece to
piece with a finely honed balance between the liturgical and dramatic elements.
Dijkstra has clearly studied the score with care, and the precision of singing
and playing here makes this a first-class reading even though only speakers of
German will be able to benefit from the third, explanatory CD (thankfully,
English translations of the work’s text itself are readily available online).

“Explanatory” is not exactly
the word for Ken Russell’s 1983 film of The
Planets, made for London Weekend Television and built around a performance
of Holst’s suite by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. The film
runs just 50 minutes – the length of Holst’s music – but what it offers will
stay with many viewers well beyond that time frame. It is simply a collage, but
not a simple collage. The Mars, the
Bringer of War movement includes the expected missiles and military
maneuvers; Venus, the Bringer of Peace
scenes range from female nudity to breast-feeding and some atmospheric desert
scenes; Mercury, the Winged Messenger
mostly contains images of speed, some aloft and some in the water; Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
showcases expressions of joy in various forms and various cultures; Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age is
unusually atmospheric in its use of crowd scenes – crowds of vehicles, not just
of people – and pollution; Uranus, the
Magician is less about sleight-of-hand than about puzzlement and a “how do
they do that?” sensibility; and Neptune,
the Mystic is a montage of cosmic scenes, yoga poses, extreme close-ups and
difficult-to-fathom visuals. The film surely seemed more original in 1983 than
it does today – now it is a (+++) work, given the decades of music videos that
have done much the same thing and, indeed, often done it to death. But even if
the specifics of the structure have not held up particularly well, the actual
performance of The Planets is quite
good, andeven if “everybody knows” the
music (in truth, “everybody knows” only some of it, not really the entire
suite), there remains enough originality in Russell’s film to make it
worthwhile viewing and to help revive jaded listeners’ interest in the Holst
music itself – notably the overplayed Mars
and Jupiter sections. Russell’s film
was made for The South Bank Show,
the weekly arts program of Britain’s ITV network, and was screened only once on
that show – after which it disappeared until this ArtHaus Musik DVD release.
The availability of this recording is therefore something to celebrate, even if
elements of the film itself now seem less unusual and creative than they did
when Russell first made it.